


Burn Up or Burn Down the World

by minchout



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gender or Sex Swap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 21:51:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1201888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minchout/pseuds/minchout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wanted different, and he wanted a way out of the life, but this isn't exactly what he had in mind. Luckily Dean is there, obnoxious and beautiful in equal measures, and willing, as always, to do anything for his brother.</p>
<p>Written for the 2013/2014 spn_reversebang. I was super lucky to work with the lovely quickreaver who is not only a fantastic artist but is also an inspiring partner who was willing to let me do just about anything with these characters. Thanks for being awesome, bb, and I hope I did your work justice!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Up or Burn Down the World

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [reversebang prompt and extra art](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/36451) by quickreaver. 



Sam wakes at one in the morning, a cramp in his gut. At first, it’s a barely-there sensation, almost a dream, and he’s right on the edge of back to sleep when it hits again, pain tugging at his midsection. He groans, reflex, and curls onto his side. He’s felt this before. He’d been sliced across the gut by a werewolf’s claws the first time he’d helped Dad and Dean hunt one of the creatures, and the pain is similar. He holds his hands to his stomach. When he looks down the length of his body, he expects to see blood.  
  
He calls for his brother, but when he looks to the other bed, he remembers that Dean isn’t there. They’d fought again earlier that night. Dad is on another hunt; Sam is nearing graduation and worried Dad will come home and pull him out of school before Sam makes it to the end. He’s restless. His body is growing quickly. It seems overnight he shot up taller than Dean. He’s always stood out for being the new kid. Now he stands out because he’s taller than everyone and gangly with it. He hunches to make himself seem smaller but has a feeling that just makes it worse. Dean tells him so what if he’s gangly; he’s fast, and he’s graceful in a fight; years of training have made his too long limbs work just fine on the hunt, especially when Dean and John have his back. That just makes Sam angrier, though. It’s not all about the hunt. Not to him. And he hates it, that this divide between him and his brother gets wider and wider the older Sam gets and the more he wants other things.  
  
He rolls onto his stomach and tries carefully to stretch out. He remembers when he was a kid, Dean would tell him to lay on his stomach when he felt sick, that sometimes that helps. It doesn’t help now, and before he knows it, he’s in the bathroom, face in the toilet, heaving up the cold pizza he’d had for dinner.  
  
The bathroom light pops on, and the light is for shit, so it flickers for a minute before it catches, and Sam’s first thought is _spirit_ , and then Dean is stepping around him and sitting on the edge of the bathtub, his big, firm hand rubbing between Sam’s shoulder blades.  
  
“You’re alright, kiddo,” he says. “Get it out.”  
  
Sam pulls a shaky breath. Puts his forehead to the rim of the bowl and huffs out a rueful little laugh. "Ugh."  
  
He's more than a little relieved to hear his brother's voice.  
  
Dean steps over him again – not much room and they’re two almost grown men – and rinses a washcloth out in the sink. He sits back down on the tub and pulls Sam to lean against his leg, brushes Sam’s bangs out of the way, then lays the folded up cloth on his forehead.  
  
“Better?” he says. His voice is rough. He smells a little like cigarettes and a lot like drugstore cologne, which mimics Old Spice but smells mostly like alcohol and Listerine.  
  
Sam nods and shuts his eyes. His stomach is still cramping, the pain low in his gut, but he’s a little calmer now, and a lot more awake.  
  
“I ate that pizza,” Sam says after a while.  
  
Dean laughs. His fingers are tangled in Sam’s hair, and Sam would be annoyed if he felt anything like himself.  
  
“Dude,” Dean says. “That shit’s like two weeks old.”  
  
“You had the car, and Dad’s got us out here in the boonies,” Sam says. He swallows.  
  
“Call me next time. I would’ve brought food back with me.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
They sit like that for a while until Sam is almost asleep against his brother’s leg. Then Dean forces Tylenol down Sam’s throat and puts him in his bed. He scoots in next to Sam on top of the covers, his back against the headboard, his legs stretched long and crossed at the ankles.  
  
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam says.  
  
Dean shrugs.  
  
***  
  
When Sam wakes again, everything is different. He feels it in his bones. He doesn’t feel sick anymore. Dean is fast asleep in a careless face-plant of a sprawl on the other bed, his boxers twisted and his hair sticking out in every direction. Everything important in Sam’s life – his brother, his Dad, his books, the Impala, the acceptance letter from Stanford – all are exactly where they should be. But Sam is a different person.  
  
He turns onto his back and looks sideways to make sure Dean is still sleeping. There’s a weight on his chest, and a tightness inside of him, and he wonders briefly if he’s having a panic attack or a heart attack or maybe both. He shoves his hand beneath his shirt and up his torso, and it’s a shock when his hand cups a lump of flesh where his flat, bony chest used to be. He flinches, his fingertips cold against his nipple, then he pulls his hand out of his shirt and jumps out of bed, beelines it to the bathroom.  
  
He stands in the dark for a long time. He grips the lip of the sink and breathes hard trying to stop the breakdown he can feel coming, the tingle of it up his spine, the overwhelming rush of anger twisting in his stomach and fighting to explode. It feels like it’s felt every time he’s ever been angry with their dad and started a fight, only right now there’s no one to fight with.  
  
Sam strips slowly, trying to stay calm. His movements are jerky, his hands shaking. He leaves the light off and explores the changes, blind. His new breasts are small, small enough he can cover one with his hand, but they’re real. The hair leading from his belly button to the root of his dick is gone. In its place is smooth skin above a patch of curly, rough hair, and when Sam runs his fingers through the hair, exploring, he finds the lips of a vagina.  
  
He pulls his hand away. He can’t go there. He _can’t_. He turns on the lights and looks at himself in the mirror. The changes are subtle – his lips seem a little fuller, the cut of his cheekbones is more apparent, his lashes a bit longer. His hair and skin both look softer. Strangely, he looks more like Dean now, and he wonders if that means he looks like Mary and if the sight of him is going to make his dad go off the rails. All of that said, he’s still essentially Sam but for this new body. In the mirror, Sam can see that his shoulders and arms are still strong from training, but he’s lost the width and the bony angles he’d gotten used to as his skin stretched to accommodate his growth. His body is still almost a boy’s body, long and straight, but his hips are rounder, the line of his thighs a smooth almost “v” down to his knees.  
  
He folds in on himself, closes the lid of the toilet and sits, his elbows on his legs. He has to pee, but he’s not prepared to face that right now.  
  
“Sam?” Dean says through the door. He turns the knob. Sam has all of three seconds to wish he’d locked the door behind him, and then Dean is in the room with him. “You still sick?”  
  
Sam hunches, tries to cover his chest. “A little privacy, Dean? Fuck,” he says.  
  
“Fuck,” Dean says. “Sammy--”  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
Dean steps closer.  
  
“Get out!” Sam says. He stands. Dean’s already seen, so he doesn’t bother trying to cover himself. He shoves his brother, his palms square against Dean’s shoulders. “Get out!” he says again.  
  
Dean doesn’t move, and Sam grabs him by the wrist, mashing his thumb into the pressure point there and spinning Dean so that his back is to Sam and his arm is ratcheted up the center of his back.  
  
“Ow,” Dean complains, and Sam pushes him out of the bathroom, shuts the door behind him.  
  
Dean pounds on the door, and Sam stands horrified. He could feel the difference in the way he moved, the way his center of gravity was off, the way he could barely get the jump on his brother. Were it not for the pressure point Dean himself had taught Sam, no way would Sam have overpowered him.  
  
“We need to talk about this, Sam,” Dean says. “We need to figure out what did it. There’s no reason to freak out on me, kiddo. We can reverse it. Just--” the doorknob rattles. “Just get dressed and come out and talk to me.”  
  
Sam pulls his boxers on, then his t-shirt. He’s horrified at the way his breasts show through the thin fabric. The shirt is an old one of Dean’s, the v of the neck stretched, and Sam can actually see the line of his breast above the collar. He wraps his arms around his chest before creeping slowly into the room. He presses his back to the wall and refuses to look at his brother. He scratches at his ankle with his other foot. He clears his throat.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says. “Okay.”  
  
“What the fuck, Dean?” Sam says.  
  
“I know,” Dean says.  
  
“No, you really really don’t.”  
  
Dean rubs a hand across his face. Sam is looking at him now, and Dean doesn’t look as horrified as Sam would have thought. The expression on his face is more bemused than anything, and despite Sam’s arms being in the way, his eyes keep flicking to Sam’s chest like he can’t help himself, and Sam wants to laugh at the absurdity of that, of his brother checking him out.  
  
“Dude,” Sam says, pointed.  
  
“Sam…” Dean says. He at least has the good grace to look a little embarrassed. “Is there anyone who would want to hurt you?” he says. “Anyone who might want to work a little mojo on you to get back at you for something?”  
  
Sam shakes his head. The truth of the matter is, Sam hasn’t been at this school long enough to make friends, much less to get in anyone’s way. The last time he’d gotten close to someone had been a year before when Dad had left him and Dean in a trailer park in Memphis. There had been Tom there, Sam’s first boyfriend, and Tom had been sad to see Sam go, but he hadn’t seemed vindictive.  
  
“Think, Sammy,” Dean said.  
  
“I _am_ thinking, Dean,” Sam said. “Is that all you have to say? No jokes? I mean, you’ve always called me a girl. Now it’s true.”  
  
Dean rolls his eyes. “Such a drama queen.”  
  
“Shut up.” Sam bounces in place a little.  
  
“Calm down, okay? We’ll figure this out.”  
  
“It’s not that,” Sam says. “I just…I really have to pee.” His voice sounds small, and higher than he’s used to as if his voice had never dropped, and he cringes when he sees Dean’s eyes widen when he gets what Sam’s saying.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says.  
  
“You sound like a broken record,” Sam says. He stomps into the bathroom and slams the door behind him. When he sits to pee, he’s so damn relieved at how good it feels to let it go, that he barely thinks of where it’s coming from. But then he realizes he can’t just shake himself dry, and he feels like sobbing as he goes for the toilet paper.  
  
When he walks out of the bathroom, he feels more subdued. He gives Dean a sidelong look and walks past him out into the kitchenette. The floor is sticky beneath his feet, and on the table is an ashtray overflowing with butts and a full six-pack’s worth of empty cans. Sam knew Dean had been upset after they’d fought last night, but he hadn’t realized just how upset. In many ways, Dean is everything to Sam, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Sam to explain to Dean just how much he hates hunting, hates being dragged from town to town, hates never knowing if Dean and Dad are safe, never feeling comfortable anywhere, least of all in his own family.  
  
He pours a bowl of Lucky Charms and sits at the table.  
  
“What are you doing?” Dean says.  
  
“Eating breakfast.”  
  
Dean sits at the table across from him and watches Sam eat.  
  
“Getting a good long look at the freak?” Sam says. His mouth is full of cereal. Milk drips down his chin.  
  
“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean says. “Don’t be like that.”  
  
“And how am I supposed to be?” Sam swallows. He shakes his head. “What’s Dad going to say?” he asks.  
  
“He’ll kill the fucker who did this to you.”  
  
“I don’t want him to know. I don’t…I can’t let him see me like this, Dean.”  
  
“He can help.”  
  
“Things are bad enough between us. I don’t need him coddling me because my dick’s gone.”  
  
“Fuck that,” Dean says. “You might have a girl’s body, but you can still hunt. Besides, this is just temporary.”  
  
“I don’t _want_ to hunt. That’s not the point, Dean, and fuck you for making it about hunting.”  
  
“Jesus, Sammy. Are you on the rag or something?”  
  
Sam sucks in a breath. It’s nothing Dean wouldn’t have said before, but the cut goes deeper now. Sam gets up from the table. He paces through the kitchen, but Dean stands and walks to him, pulls him over to the couch and sits him down.  
  
“You have school today?”  
  
Sam nods.  
  
“I’ll call the office, tell them you’re sick.”  
  
“Thanks,” Sam says.  
  
“We’ll figure this out, Sammy. You know we will.”  
  
***  
  
As Sam gets dressed, he listens to the rise and fall of Dean’s voice from the kitchen. He sounds gruff, like he’s purposefully making his voice deeper, probably trying to sound like their dad. He lets the sound of his brother’s voice lull him into something like calm so that he can deal with taking his pajamas off and putting clothes onto his new body. It works for a while until he has a real moment of panic when he doesn’t know how to deal with his breasts. He doesn’t have a bra, doesn’t know the first thing about buying one. He doesn’t feel uncomfortable physically, but the idea of them being visible through his shirt is freaking him right the fuck out, so he grabs the worn ace bandage from the first aid kit and wraps it tightly around his chest. It’s constricting, and not entirely invisible beneath his shirt, but he pulls one of Dean’s flannels on over everything and thinks he can maybe still pass as a boy. For the first time ever, he considers cutting his hair as short as Dean’s. He tucks it behind his ears.  
  
Dean is waiting for him. He’s still in his boxers and t-shirt, and he’s smoking a cigarette. It’s hanging from his lips and ashing all over his lap; Sam pulls it from his mouth and tamps it out in the coffee mug Dean was using as an ash tray. He’s reminded of his Dad, of all the times Dean’s pulled a bottle out of his hand, removed his shoes, and tucked him onto the couch. Dean takes care of them. Sam doesn’t want to doubt that Dean will take care of this, too.  
  
Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam.  
  
“What’s the plan?” Sam says.  
  
“We hit the library.”  
  
“That’s it?” Sam hears the resignation in his own voice. He thinks again of his acceptance letter. He’s got school waiting for him, and it’s all paid for. Maybe he doesn’t have to deal with this at all. Maybe this is his way into a normal life. Because normal is really relative for Sam, isn’t it? Living in a woman’s body, maybe that isn’t so bad. Maybe it would even help his Dad accept Sam stepping back from hunting.  
  
“That’s all we can do for now. I was thinking about calling Caleb to see if he’s ever--”  
  
“No,” Sam says. “I don’t want anyone else knowing.”  
  
“We might not have a choice,” Dean says. “I doubt freaking bumfuck Hannibal County Library is gonna have anything on this sort of thing.”  
  
“Caleb will call Dad,” Sam says.  
  
“Pastor Jim, then--”  
  
“I said no one, Dean.” Sam sits on the couch next to his brother and rubs both hands over his face before blowing out a frustrated breath and letting his hands fall to his lap. “I can’t deal with that, okay? Dad already…I already don’t fit in. I can’t stand the way Dad would look at me if he knew.”  
  
Dean puts his hand on the nape of Sam’s neck and squeezes. “You really think it would be like that? C’mon, kiddo. It’s not like you did this. Some supernatural freak got a hold of you and did this to you. It’s not your fault.”  
  
“And if it was my fault?”  
  
Sam looks at Dean now. He wills his brother to understand, but Dean just cocks an eyebrow.  
  
“How would it be your fault?” Dean says.  
  
“I just…what if it’s something inside of me? What if it’s something I did?”  
  
“It’s not,” Dean says, and his voice says, _That’s it. End of discussion._ Sam isn’t so sure.  
  
***  
  
After a week of research, Sam and Dean are at a loss. Sam even hunts down an occult bookstore in the area, and he and Dean spend five days in its cramped, dusty stacks, noses planted in the pages. Dean is getting restless, Sam can tell. Dean’s never been good at this. He needs something he can fight, something from which to draw blood. But Sam’s sunk into a research induced zen buzz, and though they’ve gotten no closer to an answer, when the bookstore closes and he and Dean get into the Impala each night, Sam feels oddly okay.  
  
They’re driving back to the apartment on the fifth night and Dean is buzzing with energy. He has Joan Jett and the Blackhearts at top volume, and his hands are tapping at the steering wheel against the beat as if, despite the volume, he isn’t really listening to the music at all. Sam reaches over and turns it off. Dean stills, then he hits the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
Sam sighs. He blows his bangs out of his face.  
  
“Why aren’t you angry?” Dean says. He’s side-eyeing Sam like Sam is doing something suspicious.  
  
“What do you want me to do, Dean? Getting pissed isn’t going to help anything.”  
  
“Yeah, well it’s a start.”  
  
They’re silent for a minute, but then Dean cuts to the right and pulls the car onto the shoulder. He looks at Sam. “What did you mean when you said maybe it was something inside you?”  
  
Sam shrugs.  
  
“Not good enough, Sam. Answer the question.”  
  
“I don’t know what I meant.”  
  
“I mean, it’s weird, right? No hex bags, no other sign of spellwork. There aren’t any other accounts of something like this happening that we can find.”  
  
“Your point?” Sam says.  
  
“Is there something you want to tell me, kiddo?”  
  
“You know what? Fuck you, Dean. I hate that patronizing voice of yours. And quit calling me ‘kiddo.’”  
  
“Hey,” Dean says. He punches Sam on the shoulder. “Answer the question.”  
  
“Ow,” Sam says. He slides down in his seat, feeling sulky. His sudden change hasn’t kept Dean from acting like his jerk big brother. Sam isn’t sure if he’s glad or annoyed.  
  
“Sam.”  
  
“No, okay? What? You think I have some secret desire to be a chick or something? C’mon.”  
  
“What am I supposed to think? You wake up one day like this, then you say a bunch of cryptic shit. And you’ve been a holy terror lately. You’ve been moody since you first sprouted pubes, but lately it’s like everything gets you wound up. I can barely keep you and Dad from each other’s throats, but this happens and you’re a fucking Zen master all of a sudden? We don’t do coincidences, Sam. There’s a connection here.”  
  
Sam scratches at his leg. He looks away from his brother and out into the night where there are all sorts of creatures scratching at the walls, creeping into windows, spirits moaning out their fear and anger, where hunters like Sam’s dad are fighting a war Sam wants no part of. He thinks, as he always does, of just walking away. He could disappear. He knows he could.  
  
“Sam,” Dean says. “Just talk to me.”  
  
Sam can’t look at his brother. “I just wanted things to be different,” he says. “I didn’t ask for this. Not specifically.”  
  
“ _Ask_ for this?” Dean grabs Sam’s shoulder and Sam shakes him off. “Sam, what did you do?”  
  
“Nothing. I’ve just been thinking about how screwed up everything is and how there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I don’t want this life. I don’t want to hunt. I don’t want to fight with Dad every second. I wanted things to be _different_.” He shrugs. “Then I woke up and they were.” He snorts and he doesn’t like how bitter he sounds. “Guess I should’ve been careful what I wished for, huh?”  
  
Dean shakes his head. “There’s gotta be another explanation. You can’t just wish something like this into existence.”  
  
“Maybe I can,” Sam says, thinking of things he’d never tell Dean, about how he knows in his bones just how different he is from him and Dad even though he doesn’t know why or can’t put words to the specifics of it.  
  
Dean’s silent for a long time. When he finally speaks, the words are blade-sharp. “You hate us that much, huh? You want to get away from us so bad that you’d want something like this?”  
  
Sam’s familiar with that tone in his brother’s voice. There are layers of hurt there. Sam usually hears it when a hunt’s gone bad and Dad explains to Dean what exactly he did wrong, all the ways Dean wasn’t the perfect soldier; or when Sam is particularly angry, when his ire at his father spills over onto Dean. Sam doesn’t like hearing it there now because no matter the reason for Sam’s change, Dean has been nothing but supportive. And the truth is, even at his angriest, his most resentful, Sam could never hate his brother.  
  
“I don’t hate you, Dean. I couldn’t.”  
  
“I found the letter from Stanford,” Dean says.  
  
Sam feels the car growing smaller and smaller. Or maybe he’s growing bigger. He doesn’t know. He just knows he needs the fuck out of the Impala right this second. He fumbles the handle, and when he finally has it open, he spills out of the car onto the roadway and starts walking. At first, he hears nothing, just the suffocating silence of _trapped trapped trapped_ , then Dean’s hand is on his shoulder and he’s wheeling around. He tries to throw a punch, but Dean ducks him, easy. Sam’s too angry to fight smart right now, and he doesn’t have the muscle to put behind the punch anymore anyway. Girl’s arms. Girl’s speed. Sam’s emotions are hot in his veins, and, like always, he doesn’t know any other way to get rid of them but to give them to Dean.  
  
He shoves Dean away from him. “Were you spying on me? Were you going through my shit?”  
  
“No,” Dean says. “I was looking for hex bags.”  
  
And Sam can tell he’s telling the truth, but it doesn’t make him any less angry.  
  
“You were just gonna up and leave us then, huh?” Dean says. He looks resigned.  
  
There’s no point in denying it. Sam nods, once.  
  
“When were you going to tell me?”  
  
Sam shrugs. “Before I left.”  
  
“That’s real fucking good of you, Sam,” Dean says. His face twists into something ugly.  
  
“I have to leave,” Sam says. “I can’t live like this. I don’t want to.”  
  
“You have a responsibility.”  
  
“Don’t give me that bullshit. A responsibility to what? To hunting? Please.”  
  
Dean shakes his head. “To me. Maybe you have a responsibility to me. C’mon, man. I can’t do this without you.”  
  
Sam snorts, bitter. “Yes you can. You and Dad are a perfect pair.”  
  
Dean’s face closes down. “Fine,” he says, his voice flat. “If that’s what you want.”  
  
“It is,” Sam says. It hurts to say it, Sam realizes. Both because it’s true and because it’s not. He can’t do it alone either. He’s thought for months about asking Dean to come with him, but he didn’t ask before and he doesn’t ask now. He’s too scared of what the answer will be.  
  
***  
  
Sam wakes in the middle of the night. Something woke him. Some noise. Dean is on the bed next to his. Sam’s not sure when that happened. After Dean dropped Sam off that night, he’d left without a word; the grumble of the Impala leaving the parking lot, her tires kicking up gravel, said enough.  
  
Sam sits up and does the same check he’s done every time he’s woken up since the time he woke up changed. Boobs? Check. Vulva? Check. He gets absorbed in it sometime. He’s tried tentatively once or twice to touch himself _down there_ , but he doesn’t quite understand the equipment and it scares him. Sam’s never had sex with a girl before. He’s never even kissed one. He knows how to make another guy feel good. Knows the feel of another man’s cock in his hand and on his tongue. But this is beyond him. It turns him on – the novelty of it and the illicit pleasure he thinks he might get from touching himself like this – but he’d never admit that. Not aloud.  
  
Sam is jerked from his thoughts by the sense that someone is watching him. He looks immediately to Dean, though he knows the feeling is coming from another direction. He stares at his brother’s face, gathering his courage, then he turns his head slowly to meet his visitor.  
  
She’s standing at the foot of his bed, her head cocked to one side like a curious puppy’s. She’s naked, but her skin is a dull grey-blue, her hair raven black. She’s beautiful, despite being obviously supernatural, and Sam feels the pull of her. He wants to crawl to the foot of his bed and touch his fingertips to her skin. He’s aroused he realizes, aching and wet, and it’s such a shock, so different from what he’s used to that for the first time it really sinks in. This is really happening. He’s no longer a boy. He’s a girl. And that might never change. Except he has a suspicion that this is the creature that did it and thinks that it’s stupid and reckless of it to show itself in front of Sam and Dean Winchester. Dean isn’t much help snoring on his bed, of course, but that’s beside the point.  
  
Sam reaches to grab the knife Dean makes him keep beneath his pillow.  
  
“It’s not there,” the creature says. “Not that it would harm me if it were.”  
  
“What are you?”  
  
“I am Persephone.”  
  
“The goddess?” Sam says, he raises an eyebrow.  
  
The creature smiles. “No, but I was named for her.”  
  
“ _What_ are you?” Sam tries again.  
  
Her mouth twists as if she’s displeased. “Your people would call me a succubus.”  
  
Sam tries to recall anything he knows about these creatures. His father had dealt with one before. Men had been dying in their sleep, their wives waking to find them dry and withered as autumn corn husks. It had been a succubus then, visiting in the night. Dad had used Dean as bait (though, to hear Dean tell it, he’d _volunteered_ ) and they’d killed the creature, but it had taken a full month for Dean to regain the strength she’d taken from him. None of that fit with what was happening to him now, though.  
  
“You did this to me?” Sam says.  
  
“Now, Sam,” the creature says, she _tsks_ , and the sound is close to serpentine. “Has my gift really been so bad?”  
  
She sits on the edge of Sam’s bed, right beside him, the movement unnaturally fast. Sam pushes away from her, but she wraps her hand around the nape of his neck and holds him in place. She’s radiating heat, her touch uncomfortable. Sam can feel himself - _her_ self – beginning to sweat. She melts into the creature’s touch, letting it trail its fingers up her neck, opening her mouth when the creature’s fingers tap at her lips.  
  
“There now,” the creature says. “I don’t think my gift has been that bad. You’re wet for me, baby girl.”  
  
Sam shakes her head, desperate.  
  
“I don’t normally visit my prey when they’re awake, but I’ve given you a gift. I’m trying something new. Let’s say it’s an experiment, and you were taking so very long to catch on.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam says.  
  
“Dean can’t hear you. If he were to wake right this moment, he’d see only you sleeping peacefully in your bed. So don’t let’s waste your breath.”  
  
Sam shuts her eyes, when she opens them again, Persephone is so close Sam can barely focus on her.  
  
“I’m not like my sisters,” Persephone says. “I’m not cruel. I want my prey to live. But I do need to feed. It’s not much to ask, is it? That in return for your life, you’d give me your sex?”  
  
“Don’t,” Sam says. “Don’t touch me.”  
  
“A little late for that, baby girl. I don’t mean me, anyway.” The creature’s eyes flicker over Sam’s shoulder to rest on Dean.  
  
“No,” Sam says. She tries to pull out of Persephone’s grasp, but succeeds only in shuddering.  
  
“You won’t have a choice,” Persephone says.  
  
She kisses Sam’s forehead, and Sam falls back to sleep.

 

***

 

Sam remembers everything the next morning. She tells Dean over cereal, all but the last bit. She doesn’t know what Persephone meant when she said Sam wouldn’t have a choice, but Sam can imagine what that would mean. She’d die before she’d force Dean into something like that.  
  
Dean accepts Sam’s story as if he’s not surprised.  
  
“Told you this wasn’t your fault, Sammy,” Dean says.  
  
Sam isn’t so sure. She thinks she may have called Persephone to her, whether the calling was intentional or not.  
  
“Whatever,” Sam says. “We’ve gotta take her out, Dean.”  
  
“Of course. That’s what we do.” He smiles, Trix colored. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which means he’s still thinking of Stanford. He’s still unhappy. Still hurt. But he’s there for Sam all the same.  
  
***  
  
It doesn’t take long for Sam to get sick. She spikes a fever that afternoon while reading a book about sex demons luring children to hell with promises of bringing them to their dead parents. The demons would then raise the children as their own, twisting them into creatures who thrived on sex and sought out that knife’s edge of pain that turned to pleasure right at the sweet spot. They’re back in the occult store, and Dean is hopeful now that they have a solid lead. But Sam’s been turned on all day. She’s been able to hide it, but the images in the book are getting under her skin, and the ache of it has moved into her body, into her neck and head. Her skin feels tight, itchy. She can barely concentrate on the words on the page. Dean is saying something to her, but the buzzing in her ears is too loud for her to hear. She watches her brother talking, watches his lips moving, his bright, worried eyes. His hair is messy because he always runs his hands through it when he’s researching. It’s an unconscious gesture on his part, a response to the boredom and frustration of being stuck in one place reading. Sam knows this because she knows Dean, every inch of him. And she wants suddenly to mean that _literally_. She wants to strip Dean bare and explore his skin, learn him by touch and kiss.  
  
She pushes back from the table. “I’ve gotta get some air,” she says. She can tell her voice is too loud, and Dean looks at her like she’s sprouted a second head, but she doesn’t care. She fumbles until she’s standing, and she knocks over a stack of books as she makes her getaway.  
  
Outside, she finds an alley between the book store and the next building. She stops and leans her head back against the brick. She’s gasping for air, and she’s so fucking turned on at the thought of kissing her brother she could put her hand down her pants right now, right here in the open. She moans and shuts her eyes.  
  
“Sammy?” Dean says.  
  
Sam shakes her head. “Please,” she says, and she doesn’t know if she’s asking him to leave her alone or to come closer.  
  
Dean moves so that he’s standing right in front of Sam. He puts his hand on her forehead like he’s checking for fever, and his touch makes Sam moan openly. She presses her hips into her brother, then she tries to stop herself. She succeeds only in jerking away and skittering sideways, where she trips and falls and goes down hard on her hands and knees. Dean gets his hands beneath her armpits, and he lifts her to her feet.  
  
“No,” Sam says.  
  
She can’t even look at her brother, and the feel of his hands is too much. It sets sparks skipping across her skin like jolts of electricity. Dean keeps at it, though, and he gets her to the car, deposits her in the passenger seat and closes the door. She curls against it, tucking her long legs up onto the seat, and she leans her forehead against the window. She feels more flexible in this body, more able to make herself small, and she uses that to her advantage, letting her body language send clear signals to Dean not to touch her. She’s not sure what it says about her that she’s happy that Dean ignores the signals and presses the flat of his hand to her back. It begins as a comforting weight between her shoulder blades, but it escalates, and Sam feels it like a brand by the end of the car ride. She’s squirming beneath the touch, then squirming closer to him. She’s torn between pressing right up against her brother, rutting against him, and opening the car door so that she can slide out onto the highway and end this before it can fuck their lives any further than their lives already are fucked.  
  
Dean says nothing. He just drives them home, and he helps Sam into bed. Once she’s beneath the covers, she pushes Dean away. She can’t help herself.  
  
“Get out,” she says. Her voice is coated with fear, but she sounds more like herself than she has since she’s changed, and that more than anything is probably what makes Dean so damn stubborn and makes him stay right where he is instead of listening. Sam realizes suddenly that Dean’s been treating her with kid gloves since the change. Had Sam still been a boy and had Dean found out about Stanford like that, he would have thrown a punch, easy. He would have kept at Sam until Sam either said something unforgivable or gave in and gave Dean what he wanted – Sam stuck in the life for good.  
  
“No,” Dean says.  
  
He sits on Sam’s bed, right were Persephone sat, and Sam laughs. She tosses her head against her pillow.  
  
“Get out,” she says. “Get out, get out, get out.”  
  
“Sam,” Dean says. He grabs Sam by the shoulders and shakes her once. Sam finally blinks her eyes open and looks at him, and Dean pushes Sam’s bangs from her sweaty forehead. “Talk to me, kiddo,” Dean says.  
  
“I can’t,” Sam says. She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to talk to you without fucking everything up. Everything’s so fucked up. I don’t want you to think I hate you. You’re the only thing. The only good thing.”  
  
Dean’s brow furrows like he’s confused, and Sam reaches up to touch her fingertips to the crease between his eyebrows. Dean lets her.  
  
“You’re really beautiful,” Sam says.  
  
Dean snorts. “Yeah, and you’re high on succubus juice.” He looks thoughtful for a moment. “And you’re a chick. You’ve got chick emotions. I guess I can’t make fun of you for being a giant girl anymore, huh? It’s not as fun when you really are one.”  
  
“Lame,” Sam says. “I’ve got such a lame-o for a big brother.”  
  
She sobs and curls in on herself. It feels as if flames are licking across her stomach and dancing into her chest. She aches between her legs, deep and secret.  
  
Dean disappears for a moment, and he comes back with a cool rag for her forehead, but Sam barely feels it. She’s lost to whatever the succubus is doing to her body, and the day stretches out long and painful before she passes out and into sleep.  
  
  
***  
  
Sam wakes up a few hours later, desperate. She’s burning from the inside, and she thinks crazily of the first hunt their dad went on after Sam found out about the family business. Dad had heard about a job and thought it was the kind of thing he handled, but it had turned out that a brother and sister had honest-to-God spontaneously combusted, nothing supernatural about it. Sam had carried that with her all these years, and sometimes, when the fighting between Sam and their dad got really bad and Dean took Sam somewhere to cool her down only to have Sam turn around and lay everything on him, Sam thought sometimes that there was no other way for it to end for the two of them, that they were so wrapped up in each other that they’d die together in a burst of heat.  
  
Sam stumbles from her bed. She’s sweated through her bedsheets and everything else, and she pulls her clothes off as she moves, first her flannel, then her t-shirt, her jeans and boxers, she unwinds the ace bandage from her chest. She makes it into the bathroom and locks herself in. She turns the shower on cold and crawls in, sits on her bare ass on the cold tub floor, her knees tucked to her chest, her hands wrapped around her legs, and her face turned up into the stream.  
  
She doesn’t know how long she sits like that. It helps at first, but the heat is inside, and no amount of cold water will stop it. She turns the water off and spreads out in the tub, hooks one leg over the side and puts her other foot against the wall. She touches herself, and though she’s wet, painfully turned on, everything hot and swollen, she can’t do anything. Her fingers slip against the lips of her pussy and it feels good, but it’s not what she wants, and she doesn’t know how to move her hands in the right way even if it were what she wanted. She finally finds what she thinks is her clit, and it sends shocks of pleasure though her, curling her toes, but it still isn’t enough, and when she’s rubbed long enough that her hands ache and she still feels as if she’s burning, she stops, presses her face against the shower wall, and sobs.  
  
Dean finds her like that, and Sam can’t stop herself. When she sees her brother, she crawls from the tub and walks to him. She presses her body against his, rubs herself against him, spreads her legs and rubs her cunt against his jeans.  
  
Dean shoves her away, and Sam feels as if she could rip her hair out. Dean is scared, she can tell, but he doesn’t seem surprised, or even against the idea of fucking her, and she thinks, if she could just approach him the right way that maybe he’d give in, maybe he’d give her what she needs.  
  
“Dean,” she says. She slides her hands around his waist and pulls him in. She kisses him on the mouth, and it’s awkward. She doesn’t quite know what to do and Dean isn’t responding. “Please,” she says, her lips moving against Dean’s stubbled cheek. “Please.”  
  
“Sammy,” Dean says. “This isn’t you.”  
  
“I want you. I think…I think I’ll die without you.” And the bitch of it is, Sam thinks the words are true, even if he’s only saying them because of Persephone.  
  
“Sam,” Dean says, and it’s not a no. The word comes out in a moan, and Sam can feel Dean is growing hard.  
  
Sam reaches down and rubs Dean through his jeans. Dean’s body is one long line of tension against Sam’s as Sam unzips Dean’s fly and pulls his cock out through his boxers, but when she starts to work his cock, he relaxes a bit. He’ll do this for Sam. Sam knows it the way she knows that if she gets hurt on a hunt, her brother will be there to stitch her up; knows it the way she knows that if she really does go to Stanford, no matter how badly it will hurt both of them, Dean will still be there for her if she needs him. Dean will be there for her always and forever, and if he dies before Sam, he’ll find a way to stay here and protect her.  
  
Sam leads Dean backwards to Dean’s bed, and Dean goes with it. They’re fumbling for each other’s mouths now, trying to kiss, trying to learn how to kiss each other. They fit together so well and always have, but this is new and they come at it like sparring, each trying to get the upper hand. It finally clicks, though, when Dean sits on his bed with a huff and Sam takes Dean’s bottom lip between her teeth and Dean groans. Sam scrambles into Dean’s lap, spreads her legs so she’s straddling him, the head of his cock brushing the lips of her pussy, and she takes her brother’s face in her hands and she kisses him again. Their mouths fit better this time. Their tongues find the right rhythm, and that burning that Sam’s been feeling, she realizes now for _days_ , finally begins to abate.  
  
Without warning, Sam lifts her hips, and she reaches down to direct Dean’s cock into her body. She grunts as she sits down on it. There’s a deep ache, the feel of something stretching, making way for her brother to fit, then sharp pain followed by absolute satisfaction. She closes her eyes and touches her forehead to her brothers.  
  
“Jesus,” Dean is saying. “Jesus fuck, Sammy. Are you okay?”  
  
Sam nods. She begins to ride her brother. It’s difficult. She’s never done this, and as good as it feels, it _hurts_. The muscles in her thighs are protesting, and she feels on the verge of falling off of Dean’s lap, and she laughs at the absurdity of it and opens her eyes and smiles at Dean.  
  
“This is crazy,” she says.  
  
“You’re telling me.” Dean smiles too, and then he lifts her and tosses her onto the bed on her back.  
  
Sam pushes up onto her elbows and watches as Dean strips his shirt off. His cock is standing wet and hard from the fly of his jeans, and Sam can see that there’s blood, can even feel that she’s bleeding, but she wants her brother back inside of her. When Dean is finally naked, he seems to realize what’s happening, that Sam is on his bed, naked too, and that they’re about to fuck, that they’ve already really and truly crossed a line they can never uncross.  
  
Dean’s face softens. “You sure about this, Sammy?”  
  
Sam nods.  
  
Dean doesn’t move.  
  
“Don’t think too hard about it,” Sam says. “It’s…we both know it’s the succubus, but I think it’s the only way to fix this. The least we can do is enjoy it.” She shrugs. “Besides, you feel good.”  
  
“She wanted me to feel good to you,” Dean says.  
  
He’s starting to look uncertain again, and Sam knows she should be uncertain, too. She knows she should want to find another way, but she doesn’t want that.  
  
“This is the best I’ve felt in years,” Sam admits. “Maybe that makes me a freak, but that’s how I feel.”  
  
Dean gets onto the bed with Sam, crawls up her body until Sam has no choice but to lay back. They’re face to face.  
  
“If you’re a freak, you’re my freak,” Dean says.  
  
Sam smiles despite herself. “Told you I had a lame-o for a brother.”  
  
“Shut-up,” Dean says. Then he shuts Sam up by kissing her.  
  
He takes it slow, and the part of Sam that can still feel Persephone’s hold hates Dean for it, but the part of Sam that is _Sam_ and that is aware that this is Dean and this is the first time for Sam that sex has actually meant something, that part of Sam is glad her brother is taking his time. Dean’s thumb find’s Sam’s breast, and the soft drag of it up the underside and across the peaked nipple has Sam shuddering against her brother and gasping into his mouth. Dean’s fingers settle there, rolling her nipple almost playfully, and Sam pulls her lips from Dean’s and mouths at his jaw line, trying to find a spot to kiss that will make Dean shocky with pleasure just as he’s making her. Dean’s other hand slides through the hair at the nape of Sam’s neck to cradle her skull, and he holds her like that as she spreads her legs again, making room for him to push inside of her. It still hurts, and Dean makes shushing noises against her ear.  
  
“You’re okay, Sammy,” he says, and Sam moans and pulls Dean closer to her with a leg hooked around Dean’s ass. Dean laughs at that and bites her earlobe, kisses her again, long and messy, holding still inside of her, even though it’s a struggle for both of them not to move. Finally, Dean props himself up on his forearms above her, and he rolls his hips, pulling out of her, then fucking back in, hard enough to make her cry out and push her up the bed. Dean’s clever hands find the folds of her pussy then as he fucks her, his thumb tugging at the labia before skittering across her clit. When she bucks into his touch, he says, “Just like that,” and his thumb settles there, rubbing circles over that spot that’s driving her insane.  
  
Her whole body feels lit up with Dean’s cock inside of her, and she feels energy building and releasing, building and releasing, cresting and crashing like waves. When she comes, Dean pressed deep inside of her, his fingers working her clit and his teeth buried in her shoulder, it’s the most intensely pleasurable thing she’s ever felt, and she’s certain she’ll never feel anything that good ever again. The look on Dean’s face as he comes, though, is something else entirely, and Sam watches her brother above her, her fingers resting on his cheek as his eyes squeeze shut, the skin crinkling around them. She loves the flush of his cheeks, the sweat on his lip, his eyelashes fanned against the skin beneath his eyes.  
  
Sam doesn’t know if the succubus is gone then or not, but they fuck again for the sheer pleasure of it. Dean lies against the pillows and lets Sam straddle him, lets her ride his cock, his hands on her hips to guide her. She’s a little unsure, but once she gets the rhythm, sees Dean’s eyes go glassy as they watch her, she takes over, and Dean lets his hands wander, brings them up to cup her breasts, uses callused fingers to trace the circle of her belly button and to tease the skin below, which once had a trail of wiry, dark hair but now just had peach fuzz. His fingers find the folds of her around his cock, and they settle there, rubbing her to completion as she wrangles another orgasm out of him. Later that night, when Dean can’t get hard again, he spreads Sam’s legs open and kisses a trail down her torso before eating her pussy as if he were dying for it. When he’s finished, his face is red, his lips shiny, and Sam pulls Dean to her and kisses her taste from his lips. When they finally sleep, they’re both sore and tired, and their bodies are tangled together beneath the sheets.  
  
***  
  
When Sam wakes, she half expects to be a boy again now that she and Dean have done what Persephone wanted of them. But she knows immediately that the spell hasn’t reversed. She no longer feels that burning need that she’d felt, but she’s still a girl. Her vagina aches from use, and she squeezes her legs together thinking about Dean inside of her. She’s naked, lying on her back, and Dean is sprawled carelessly beside her on his stomach, one arm over her torso, his face turned away toward the wall. Sam looks down at herself, takes a moment to really _look_ in a way she hasn’t allowed herself since the change. She’s been furtive with this new body, covering it as quickly as possible when she dresses, doing only the bare minimum in the shower, her eyes shut tight to block out what she was seeing. But last night changed that. Having Dean see her that way and love her all the same made it easier to accept.  
  
Despite the ache, Sam is comfortable. Dean is a warm weight beside her. There’s muddy sun filtering through the blinds, and it’s nice against her skin. She suddenly wants to explore this body; even more, she wants Dean to explore it with her. But she doesn’t know where they are right now. Dean had been willing – Sam’s positive of that – but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re brothers or brother and sister or whatever. John Winchester might have raised them to skirt society’s rules, but this was bad, even for them.  
  
Sam twists slowly, trying to turn onto her side to face Dean without waking him. She’s sure he’ll freak the second he opens his eyes and remembers what they’ve done, and Sam wants to delay the panic and questions as long as possible. But Dean turns his face into the mattress and snorts awake with Sam’s movements. He turns his face toward Sam’s, and a lazy, cat-that-got-the-canary grin spreads across his face.  
  
“Hey, Sammy,” he slurs.  
  
Sam returns the smile, tentative. “Hey, Dean,” she says. She tucks her hand beneath her pillow. Her breast is resting against her bicep, and the sensation is quickly becoming less strange. Dean pulls her in close with the arm that’s still draped over her torso, and he buries his face against her collarbone, pressing kisses to the skin beneath his lips. The sensation is fluttering, Dean’s lips still smiling and lazy, and it skitters goose bumps across Sam’s skin. She shivers and laughs, pressing her mouth to Dean’s bed head.  
  
“You aren’t gonna freak out?” she mumbles.  
  
Dean pauses at that, just breathing against her skin now. He seems to truly consider the question. “Yeah,” he says finally. He kisses her chest again. “I’m probably gonna freak out. But not right now.”  
  
“Okay,” Sam says. She smoothes her free hand up Dean’s back, scritches her nails through the short hair at the nape of his neck. “I think the spell’s gone,” she says.  
  
Dean stops. He does pull away then, scoots far enough away he would fall off the edge of the bed if he and Sam both weren’t tangled in the covers.  
  
“Oh,” Dean says. “I didn’t…You’re still a girl. In a girl’s body, I mean, so I just thought…”  
  
Sam sits up against the headboard. She tucks her legs to her chest and rests her chin on the tops of her knees. She almost can’t get the words out, but she tries. Dean won’t meet her eyes. “That’s why you were touching me just now?” she says. “Because of the spell?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Dean words are more of a grunt than anything else. He’s still not looking at Sam, and his unwillingness to look, to see her, makes her feel as self-conscious of her new body as she had the day she’d woken with it. She tries to pull the sheet up to cover herself, and her tugging against it shifts Dean’s weight. He gives a little high-pitched _squawk_ before dropping off the edge of the bed to the floor. Sam is pleased with herself for it and hopes the fall hurt.  
  
“Go then,” she says.  
  
Dean looks up at her from the floor, his face confused, a little indignant. “Sam,” he says.  
  
“ _Go_ , Dean,” Sam says. “You don’t need to be here. Don’t do me any favors. The spell’s gone. I won’t be begging for my brother’s dick again.”  
  
Dean flinches at the words. He looks like he wants to say something else, but he nods instead and picks himself up off the floor. He pulls a pair of briefs on, taking his time about it, reluctant. He’s quicker with jeans and a t-shirt, and when he’s fully dressed, he turns back to Sam.  
  
“I would do anything for you, you know that, right?”  
  
Sam wants to argue, but what comes out is a sigh. “Maybe that’s the problem,” she says.  
  
“How can that be a problem?”  
  
He looks genuinely confused, and Sam, for a moment, thinks about how adorable he looks that way, his eyes big and round, his pink lips pursed, swollen from the pressure of their mouths together. Sam thinks suddenly how young Dean still is and how she’d never thought of her brother that way before. Dean was always older, but it’s more than that. He’s been parent and protector to Sam, and the role makes Sam feel as if Dean is bigger than life, as if Dean has never been young and confused about himself and his place in this the way Sam always feels. It doesn’t make sense, really, because Sam has seen Dean falter; she’s seen Dean hurt and tired, seen him dressed down by their father and hating himself for it; all the same, the thought that Dean was as young as Sam once and is only just now tipping the edge into adulthood isn’t something Sam had considered before. But she gets it now. She thinks the responsibility Dean feels for Sam’s life, for his safety, must be something large and overwhelming, a weight different from anything Sam’s had to carry. It’s too much for any one person, and Sam doesn’t feel deserving of it. And she doesn’t know how to make Dean understand that his devotion to Sam is killing them both. They’re too wrapped up in each other. She thinks again of the brother and sister who’d spontaneously combusted and wonders if, in the moments before they burned, they’d felt anything like she feels now. She wonders if they knew the way Sam knows that what he and Dean have is dangerous, but if they’d clung together despite that knowledge, desperate for the one thing that made any kind of sense at all.  
  
Sam can’t let that happen. She won’t pull Dean down with her.  
  
She says the one thing she thinks might get through to her brother. Might make it easier for him to let Sam go. To let _them_ go.  
  
“You fucked me, Dean,” she says, her voice not unkind. “You don’t think that’s a problem?”  
  
Dean’s face shuts down. Dean’s good at hiding what he’s thinking, but Sam doesn’t think she’s ever seen her brother’s face that blank. She immediately wants to fix it, but she knows the only way to really fix what’s between them is to stop it from happening again.  
  
“Go,” she says. “Please.”  
  
And Dean leaves.  
  
***  
  
It takes Sam a long time to get out of bed. She lays on her side and watches the closed window. She feels restless and hot. She can tell Dean is no longer in the apartment because there’s a silence that wouldn’t be possible if Dean were around. Sam explores her body a bit, her fingers brushing her nipples, tracing the shape of a breast, tugging at her pubic hair. She’s doing it unconsciously as she thinks about Dean, about the way that most of the time she’s with him she spends frustrated and annoyed with him, with the way he’s crowds her, is too protective, is annoying. He has this infuriating way of being constantly _there_ , and she thinks that she doesn’t know how to live without that feeling, no matter how overwhelming it is. Because Dean’s annoying, but she loves him. She loves being the center for him. She’s selfish enough to want to keep it that way and selfish enough to want to leave to find her own place anyway.  
  
When she finally gets out of bed, she peeks through the blinds. She doesn’t see the Impala, and Dean isn’t sitting on the curb smoking, the way she half expected him to be. She digs to the bottom of her duffel for the letter from Stanford, sits back on the bed, the sheets rumpled around her. Her hands shake, just a bit, as she smoothes it out over her bare thighs. She doesn’t read it again. Doesn’t even know why she got it out, really. It’s her ticket out of here, though. If she leaves, she can make something for herself outside of hunting, outside of Dad and Dean. Without them. The thought of it makes her breath hitch in her chest from terror and excitement both. She’s more vulnerable now, maybe, with her body so different. But she’s strong, and she can learn how to protect herself with this body just as well as she could with the other. There’s a flicker of thought in the back of her mind trying to flame into something more urgent, trying to tell her that this isn’t her body, this isn’t _Sam_ , but she ignores it. Whatever else this is, she thinks maybe it’s a clean slate.  
  
She means to be gone before Dean gets back. She really does. But she’s still sitting on the bed when the Impala’s engine interrupts her thoughts, the noise of it like thunder, low and rolling and full of energy. She stays where she is as noises filter through the silence – the sound of a key in the lock, the little thump of Dean kicking the door open from where it always gets stuck in the jamb, Dean’s boots squeaking wet rubber across the linoleum that covers the entire apartment. Sam smells it now, that it’s raining. Wonders if she really did hear thunder. Wonders if she was that far inside her own head she didn’t know what was happening right outside her own door. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. She’ll have to learn to stay present now that Dean won’t be there to protect her.  
  
Dean’s been drinking. It’s obvious in the slump of his shoulders and the glassiness of his eyes. His lips are turned down at the corners, his hair damp against his forehead, and he has dad’s old leather jacket on his shoulders. It’s wet, the collar popped. It doesn’t make him look like their father, though, doesn’t make him look mean or untouchable; instead, it makes him look small, like he’s playing dress up, as if he’s trying to step into his new role as _Dean without Sam_ just like Sam is trying to do.  
  
Sam stands and sets her letter aside. She walks to her brother. She’s aware that she’s still naked, and a part of her is ashamed. She’s still unsure in this body, whatever gawky teenage awkwardness she’d felt before magnified now, but Dean has seen her already, and if this is who Sam has to be now, if this is the body she has to live with, then she needs to learn to be comfortable with it.  
  
Dean watches her as she walks toward him. He looks wary, exhausted. His stubble is darker than Sam is used to seeing, and she wants to feel it beneath her fingers, beneath her tongue. She wants to press her own smooth cheek to Dean’s rough. There’s a swooping fear low in her belly when she thinks she might never be able to grow a beard of her own, but she pushes the fear away, hides it in thoughts of her brother.  
  
Dean flinches when Sam reaches out to touch his shoulder, and Sam starts to pull her hand away, but Dean settles, so she tries again. She slides her hands beneath the leather jacket. Dean’s warm beneath, his shirt damp. He lets Sam slide the coat off of his shoulders, lets her take his wrist and lead him back to the bed. He lies back when Sam prompts him, and Sam leans over the end of the bed to unlace Dean’s boots and pull them off his feet one by one. She moves slowly, stripping Dean, and Dean’s cooperative and moves when prompted. By the time she has Dean down to his boxers, Dean’s blinking at her, half asleep and struggling to stay awake. His hip is on Sam’s letter, and Sam pulls it out from beneath, sets it aside, then crawls into the bed behind Dean. Dean rolls to his side easily, let’s Sam spoon up behind him to hold Dean in the lee of her body.  
  
“Thought _you_ were the girl,” Dean mumbles.  
  
Sam snorts, her nose pressed to the nape of Dean’s neck, and Dean shivers at the sensation. Dean smells like sweat, like bar peanuts and whiskey. He’s got a hickey on his neck that Sam is fairly certain she didn’t give him. She shuts her eyes against the anger she feels thinking about someone else’s hands on Dean.  
  
“This is weird, isn’t it?” Dean says. “Laying here like this?”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be,” Sam says.  
  
“There’s no universe where this doesn’t have to be weird.”  
  
Sam presses her lips to the back of her brother’s neck.  
  
“Like you like this, Sammy,” Dean says. “I know I’m not supposed to, but I can’t help it.”  
  
“I know,” Sam says. “It’s okay.”  
  
Sam likes it, too. She likes the feel of her breasts pressed against Dean’s smooth back, likes the curve of his ass pressed against her pelvis. She tucks one of Dean’s legs between her own and holds him closer as he begins to fall asleep. He’s fighting it, tooth and nail, and keeps trying to talk to Sam until Sam finally presses her nose behind his ear and laughs. “Shut up and sleep, Dean,” she says.  
  
Dean turns over so they’re chest to chest and Sam lets him tuck their bodies together. She indulges herself, finally, rubbing first the tip of her nose over Dean’s stubble then pressing their cheeks together. Dean chases her mouth, and they kiss, lazy with it, until Sam’s mouth is sore, her lips tingling. It’s not long before Dean finally falls asleep, and Sam follows him down.  
  
***  
  
Sam watches his brother sleeping. He woke up an hour ago, his limbs tangled in Dean’s, the warmth of their bodies mingling. Dean was snoring lightly, and his eyes were puffy with sleep; he smelled like a bar, and Sam was hard for him anyway. It was that arousal that made him shove away from Dean and out of the bed. Dean barely moved – he was always dead to the world after he drank too much – and he slept soundly as Sam huddled on the floor pulling large, ragged gulps of air into his lungs, trying to talk himself out of a panic attack. The feeling of a hard on should have been familiar and welcome; instead, it was uncomfortably foreign. He willed it to go away, as desperate for it to disappear as he was to wake his brother and beg him to help Sam take care of it. He wanted Dean. He couldn’t feel his brother inside of him anymore, and that terrified him.  
  
Eventually Sam pulls himself off the floor. He knows he should be happy that he has his body back, but he doesn’t feel like himself. He doesn’t know what it says about him that he feels more uncomfortable in this skin now than he ever had before. And he misses the ache of Dean inside of him. He can’t stop thinking of it.  
  
Sam knows immediately that if he stays, this thing between them, whatever it is, will continue, no matter that Sam is a boy again. And this is a dangerous game they’re playing. They were tangled enough in each other without sex in the mix.  
  
It doesn’t take long for Sam to pack his bag. He rarely unpacked whenever they finally settled wherever they were going to settle. He makes sure he has his acceptance letter and the paperwork for his scholarship, then he opens the door and walks out into the night. He hitches into town and hops the first bus out West. Later he’ll wonder if the succubus hadn’t done him a favor. He never would have left Dean, not really. Not until the succubus gave him a reason to fear looking Dean or his father in the face. And though Sam never forgot the look on his brother’s face as he came or the way Dean had his back through anything and everything, he tried to be happy that he’d gotten out of the life. That he’d found normal. That he’d met a girl and settled down. There were nights when he’d lie with Jess in his arms, and he’d wish the body pressed against him were harder, made of cut muscle instead of soft curves, but he put that out of his mind when he could. It would take another demon fucking Sam over for Sam to realize that he and his brother, they were it for each other. They had no choice. It was them against the world, and they’d have each other’s backs until either they burned up or they burned down the world trying.


End file.
